This elaborate diamond ring scam has been fooling people in Oakland for years

Anthony Gautille and his wife gave a man a $50 gift card in exchange for this ring, which they believed he had found on the street. They hoped to return it to its rightful owner, but discovered it was a fake. They had been scammed, and they're not alone.

Anthony Gautille and his wife gave a man a $50 gift card in exchange for this ring, which they believed he had found on the street. They hoped to return it to its rightful owner, but discovered it was a fake.

Anthony Gautille and his wife gave a man a $50 gift card in exchange for this ring, which they believed he had found on the street. They hoped to return it to its rightful owner, but discovered it was a fake. They had been scammed, and they're not alone.

Anthony Gautille and his wife gave a man a $50 gift card in exchange for this ring, which they believed he had found on the street. They hoped to return it to its rightful owner, but discovered it was a fake.

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Gautille saw a man bend over and pick up a small gift-wrapped box out of the gutter. When he opened it up, a black ring box tumbled out. The couple couldn't see exactly what was inside, but Gautille saw a "glint of what appeared to be a diamond ring."

"The box looked hand-wrapped, clearly sentimental," Gautille explained. "I immediately thought someone must have dropped it out of their coat pocket walking downtown during the holidays."

That's what Gautille was thinking when the "lucky" man walked over to them and made his case.

"Hey man, I ain't no thief," the man told Gautille and his wife, before explaining he didn't steal the ring and didn't want to go through the hassle of pawning it. Cash would be more useful to him than a diamond ring.

"I thought it was worth it to try and return someone's ring to them, and I didn't want this guy to just walk off with it, so I asked my wife if she had any cash on her," said Gautille. She didn't have cash, but she did have a $50 Visa gift card, which the man took in exchange for the ring.

Then Gautille did what many people do when they're trying to find a complete stranger: He posted to social media. It only took a few hours for a fellow Reddit user to break the bad news. Gautille had been scammed.

He was far from the first person to fall for the trick. In November 2017, a KPIX reporter was fooled into buying a ring off a man in downtown Oakland, before realizing it was a fake, the band worthless and the stone cubic zirconium.

"When I looked closer at the ring, I realized it didn't have the heft of real gold or diamond, and the banding felt cheap," said Gautille.

He said the man shown in the KPIX report was the same person who scammed him. Others on Reddit said they had also been approached by the man near Lake Merritt and in Uptown.

The Oakland Police Department said they were unaware of the ongoing scam, but anyone who suspects they've been targeted can contact the department's non-emergency line.